1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a blood rheology measuring apparatus indicating a flowability referred to generally as a fluent/viscous degree of blood, particularly to a technology of measuring an amount of a blood flow flowing in the artery, discerning a very small circulating blood flow rate constituting a basis of activity of the human texture and carrying out assessment of health, diagnosis of disease, assessment of effect of medicine and the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
It has conventionally been carried out to measure blood rheology for carrying out assessment of health of human being, diagnosis of disease, assessment of effect of medicine on the human body, assessment of soundness and functional performance of food or the like, and carrying out the assessment and the diagnosis from a result thereof. As a conventional technology, there is known a method presented by Yuji Kikuchi under a title of “Measurement of total blood flowability using a capillary model” in a professional magazine “Food research result information, No. 11 issued in 1999”, that is, a method of sampling blood from a subject, using a micro-channel array fabricated by a lithographic method and measuring blood rheology from a pass time period of blood under constant pressure.
According to the method, first, the elbow of the subject is disinfected by alcohol cotton and blood is sampled from the elbow vein by using a vacuum blood sampling tube in which there is put a heparin solution to constitute a quantity of 5% as an anticoagulant by using a 1 ml disposable syringe and a 23 G disposable needle before sampling blood. Next, there are prepared micro-channels of a capillary model fabricated by a silicon chip (micro-channel array silicon chip), which are aligned in parallel with each other by 8736 pieces with a size of a width of 7 μm, a length of 30 μm and a depth of 4.5 μm, subjected to ultrasonic cleaning in a pertinent amount of mixture solution of distilled water, ethanol and a liquid neutral detergent (trade name: mamalemon) (aiming 1:1:0.3) and sets to a blood rheology measuring apparatus (MC-FAN). Further, after cleaning a cylinder for a sample in the apparatus by distilled water, physiological salt water is substituted therefor and micro-channel array pass time period is measured by a difference of 20 cmAq by using 100 μl of the physiological salt water.
After measuring the physiological salt water, blood is measured. First, 200 through 300 μl of a blood sample is sampled by using the 1 ml disposable syringe attached with the 23 G disposable needle and further attached with about 10 cm of a polyethylene tube at a needle tip thereof, a tip of the polyethylene tube is put to the bottom of the cylinder and the blood sample is injected to push up the remaining physiological salt water. Further, the blood sample is controlled to constitute 100 μl while extracting blood from an upper end opening portion of the cylinder by using the polyethylene tube and a micro-channel array pass time period of 100 μl of blood is measured by a difference of 20 cmAq. similar to the case of the physiological salt water.
With regard to the micro-channel array pass time periods of the physiological salt water and the sampled blood calculated in this way, the pass time period of the sampled blood is corrected by the pass time period of the physiological salt water and the time period is defined as a total blood pass time period to constitute an index of blood rheology. For example, when the total blood pass time period is short, blood rheology is low and therefore, the blood flows in the capillary tube without resistance. That is, there is increased the very small circulating blood flow amount constituting the basis of activity of the human texture and therefore, the total blood pass time period can certify the healthy body.
However, according to the conventional blood rheology measuring method using the micro-channel array, blood needs to sample by piercing the elbow by using the injection needle in order to sample blood from the subject. Therefore, in carrying out an in-vivo test for examining influence of a food component on blood rheology, blood cannot be sampled from same person for many times in a day and there poses a problem that a continuous test is difficult. Further, even when an individual intends to measure blood rheology by sampling blood by oneself at one's own house apart from a medical institution, according to a method of using a micro-channel array as in the conventional example, the apparatus cannot be put in one's own house, a pertinent treatment cannot be carried out and therefore, there also poses a problem that blood rheology can be measured only at a medical institution.
It is an aspect of the present invention to provide a noninvasive blood rheology measuring apparatus, which is also a small-sized and portable apparatus, capable of simply and conveniently measuring blood rheology information without sampling blood from a subject when measuring blood rheology and means for enabling to measure blood rheology at any time, at anywhere and simply even at other than a medical institution without applying burden on the subject.